


in our secret place

by zjofierose



Series: (every now and then) on my mind - Angstober 2019 [15]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adults, Angst, Communication, Divorce, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27613937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: "I don't deserve this"/"I don't deserve you"
Relationships: Lilia Baranovskaya/Yakov Feltsman
Series: (every now and then) on my mind - Angstober 2019 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998550
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	in our secret place

**Author's Note:**

> just a baby ficlet for a prompt from a 2019 Angstober list

He comes home from Beijing exhausted and out of sync with time. He drops his charges at the skating dormitories and hails a taxi to take him home. He falls asleep in the back of the cab, leaving the cabbie to run up a frankly ridiculous rate citing “traffic” of all things at three in the morning, but Yakov pays it without argument and staggers out of the battered car, clutching his hat, scarf, and soviet era suitcase. He staggers up the stairs of his flat and into his bedroom, and he doesn’t even really notice that Lilia isn’t there before he falls asleep in his clothes on top of the duvet.

In the morning, it’s more apparent. 

The sun wakes him around nine, shockingly late for a normal day but he always gives himself and his skaters a post-travel rest day when he can - jetlag’s a bitch at any age, and only becomes more of one the older you get, he’s discovering. But after he showers and shaves and dresses in something that can’t stand up on its own, it becomes apparent that the flat is… empty.

There is no smell of fancy French coffee wafting from the kitchen. There is no sound of classical music playing from the cheap window radio. The thump of toe shoes on the wood floor they had installed in the third bedroom is not echoing up the stairs; the hallway bathroom (strictly Lilia’s domain) evinces no sounds of rushing water.

The flat is empty, and silent, and it is with a sinking in his gut and his heart in his throat that he spies a simple piece of paper sitting on the table. It’s covered with the familiar and elegant cursive he’s seen every day of the last twenty-two years, which skims across the paper like gulls across the sky, touching down only briefly before winging back into black silhouettes against the white.

_“Yasha-_

_I have moved out. You will grant me a divorce._

_Meet me at the corner cafe at eleven._

_\- Lilechka”_

\--

She never fails to take his breath away, not when she was a nineteen-year-old prodigy being feted up and down the town, not when she was twenty-four on their wedding day, and not now, at forty-six and sitting primly on a wooden chair in the old corner cafe where they’ve met for brunch every Saturday for the last fifteen years that they’ve lived in this neighborhood.

He pulls out the chair across from her and nods in greeting. His usual latte is at his place, and he stares at it, wondering if he imagined the note on the table. 

_No_ , he thinks, no, he didn’t. She was not there, even if she is now here - she was not home, and apparently will not be again.

He does not cry.

“Lilechka,” he greets, and she gives him a regal nod.

“How was it?” she asks, taking a sip of her fancy tea in its elegant gold-edged cup. “Did they win?” It’s her favorite thing about this place, this fancy tea. He knows it, just like he knows a hundred other pieces of trivia about one Lilia Malinovna Baronovskaya.

Yakov shrugs. “Georgi took gold, Victor took silver for the Novices,” he answers. “I expected no different.”

“And the girls?”

“Lyudmilla is sleeping with Mikhail and thinks I don’t know about it. She was distracted and got bronze for the Seniors.” Lilia snorts. “Tamara came fourth in Juniors, but her ankle is still recovering.”

“Good.” 

“Lilechka…”

“Yasha,” she says, and pauses as the waiter sets their usual orders in front of them: a vegetable omelet for her, fruit on the side, and a lox scramble for him with rye bread. “Yasha, I don’t deserve this. To be the background character in your life, the dutiful wife who waits at home for you to return.” She stabs a fork viciously into a strawberry and lifts it to her immaculately painted lips. 

“That’s never what I’ve asked of you,” Yakov starts, but she cuts him off with a wave of her knife.

“It’s not what you have asked of me, no; but it is what we have become. Twenty-two years, Yasha - it has never worked.”

“It did.” Yakov finds himself gripping the tablecloth, forces himself to relax his fists. 

“No, Yasha.” Her voice is gentle. “Our entire marriage has been one of us giving something up for the other, or worse - the kids, your students, giving things up for us.”

“Is it that I don’t deserve you,” he asks, “because I can change. I can fix that.”

Lilia shakes her head, and reaches over to take his hand. 

“I love you, Yasha. I always will. But your skaters - they are the hope of the future. The Russian figure skating world rests on their shoulders, especially the young ones. They deserve everything you can give them. Our relationship - trying to keep it going - it’s a distraction.”

“And you?” Yakov grits out in query, thumb absently stroking the back of her delicate hand. “What will you do?”

“My students also deserve better,” she tells him. “I’ve been offered a place as a choreographer and assistant director at the Bolshoi. I’d be a fool to turn it down. I moved my things to Moscow yesterday.”

Yakov picks up his latte and downs it, pushes his plate away from him. He can’t imagine eating.

“Why a divorce? Why not just...be apart for a while?”

“Yasha,” her voice is kind, but firm. “What would be the point in that? No. We will not drag this out. It has been a better twenty-two years than many can ever hope for, and we will end it here.”

“So that’s it, then.”

“Yes. I’ll have the paperwork sent to you.” She slices into her omelette with precise cuts, and Yakov feels that it is his heart under the knife, not two over-priced eggs and a couple of mushrooms. 

He stands. “I’ll be going, then.”

Lilia gestures to the waiter, who swiftly brings a box.

“Take your food, Yasha. You’ll be hungry later.”

He won’t, he thinks. He will be drunk later. But he takes it without protest, watching as her wedding ring glitters in the morning sunlight. It was his grandmother’s, and she hasn’t taken it off; he clings to that fragment of knowledge like a lifeline. 

“What do I tell the kids?” he asks, knowing it’s a stalling tactic even as he says it. 

She waves a napkin. “Tell them the truth. Tell them I took a job at the Bolshoi and moved to Moscow. They can still call me if they want, I won’t mind. But their focus should be here, with you.”

Yakov nods. There’s no help for it, that’s clear, and the walls are closing in. He needs to get out, to go walk, to go to a bar and forget this morning ever happened. He closes his eyes and adjusts his hat. 

“Yasha.” Her voice is strong this time, cutting through the white noise that echoes in his ears. He opens his eyes, meets her piercing green gaze. “Take care of yourself.”

He nods, once; lifts his chin. An order from the prima is not to be disobeyed. 

“Be well, Lilia Malinovna,” he tells her, and walks out the door.

He does not cry.


End file.
